MMOs and game design

Menu

user generated content

Ashellia, the Female Human Paladin, explains why she hates cinematics in games. I think she’s right on all counts, but stupid melodramatic bits of fluff with rubbish scripts still have the power to move me … dammit.

Over in Sexy Videogameland (best blog name ever?), Leigh Alexander discusses user-generated content and why she prefers games with a strong direction from the designers, rather than from the other players.

Kalon at ThinkTank ponders why on some raid nights, things just fall apart. And he’s not afraid to point fingers.

This is a great story that I got from the GameCulture blog about how gamers were recruited to help scientists fold proteins, and beat some of the biochemists at their own game.

Game Design Concepts is running a free online course on game design from June til September this year. He notes: By the end of this course, you will be familiar with the (relatively small) body of work that is accepted in the game industry as the theoretical foundation of game design. You will also be comfortable enough in processes to start designing your own games, as well as critically analyzing other people’s games.

Unwize asks whether players should be punished for not reading through quest text carefully enough.

Remember Zork and all the other text based interactive fiction games? Ever wonder what happened to that genre? They kept going and have a huge indie following. Emily Short is one of the most innovative of the new authors, check out her website for an introduction to the genre. And particularly check out her work.